Indian Maiden Brand Chippewa Lakes Real Indian Wild Rice
American Indian Owned, We Are A Direct Supplier of Authentic Hand Harvested, Organically Grown, Chippewa Lakes, Premium Quality Indian Wild Rice. We Are Also A Direct Resource for Guaranteed Authentic, Hand Crafted, American Indian Arts & Crafts.
Hi! My Name is Rebecca St. Germaine, I am a Tribal Member of The Lake Superior Band of The Lac Courte Oreilles Chippewa Indians. Reservation located near Hayward, Wisconsin. I am grateful that you have found our website and your interest in our hand harvested real Indian Wild Rice! This is my husband Rick and we are dressed in our traditional American Indian dress of the Chippewa Indians. It took me many hours to do the bead work and I brain tanned these deer skins in the traditional way.
We Sell Only The Finest Premium Real Indian Wild Rice Available! We only harvest and supply authentic Indian Wild Rice and take great pride in providing the highest quality premium Wild Rice that has been carefully cleaned and graded. This takes a very keen eye and painstakingly tedious work but the results are worth it to our customers who appreciate higher quality rice that is not dirty or shattered. Our rice may cost a bit more but you are getting the highest quality rice available which actually gives you a higher cooked output then rice that may have a lot of broken pieces. Once you taste the Indian Maiden Brand, youíll immediately notice the difference in tenderness and taste!
Our Wild is Organically Grown in the Pristine, Crystal Clear Spring Fed Waters of Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota! Our authentic Chippewa Lakes Wild Rice from the traditional Northern Lakes harvesting areas of the North American Chippewa Indians. Indian Wild Rice is really a true "organic grain" that was traditionally harvested by Chippewa Indians in the pristine crystal clear spring fed waters of Northern Minnesota and Northern Wisconsin. These sky blue waters in the beautiful far northern forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota.... remain some of the purest non-polluted waters found anywhere in the world today and provide the perfect clean water for the highly sensitive naturally grown "wild" rice.
Indian Wild Rice is Healthy For You and Very Nutritious! Wild Rice, a highly healthy and nutritious grain is not really ìriceî but an annual water grass seed whose scientific name is "zizania aquatica" and known to the Chippewa in their native language as "Mahnomin" or "good berry." The nutritional quality of wild rice is superior to that of other natural cereals. Wild rice is high in fiber, protein, the amino acid lysine, potassium, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin. This naturally organic premium wild rice is highly prized by health food enthusiasts who appreciate the delicate flavors of real lake wild rice that has been organically harvested by hand.
Wild Rice Was The Food Staple Of The Chippewa Indians of North America Real authentic Indian Wild Rice is naturally abundant in the pristine cold crystal clear rivers and lakes and was a very important staple in the diet of the Chippewa Indians that inhabited these northern forests. The Chippewa Indians lived off a healthy diet of fresh water fish like the highly prized walleye and assorted pan fish, venison from deer, rabbit, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, Indian corn and Wild Rice.
Real Wild Rice Is A Highly Prized Premium Gourmet Food Today, wild rice is highly coveted as a very special highlight of any meal and is used in a wide variety of foods such as dressing, casseroles, soups, salads, breads, and desserts. One of my more favorite Wild Rice Recipes is a Wild Rice Cranberry Pilaf fixed with wild forest mushrooms and dried cranberries. Another wild rice favorite is Creamy Chicken Wild Rice Soup.
CAUTION: Don't Buy Fake Wild Rice! There is a real problem with misrepresentation and misinformation regarding "Gourmet Long Black Wild Rice"... almost all long grain black wild rice is NOT highly prized gourmet wild rice but actually a very tough commercially grown "Paddy Rice." There is nothing "Wild" about Gourmet Long Black Wild Rice! Today, there are laws to protect the authentic traditional ìIndian Wild Riceî so that paddy rice is not misrepresented as being the real American Indian Wild Rice. This is important because the big long black grain paddy rice is very tough, lacking in flavor, and takes a good 40 minutes to cook.
How To Tell The Difference Between Real Indian Wild Rice and The Fake Stuff! Authentic northern lakes wild rice is thinner then the commercially grown paddy wild rice and can be a light gray to an almost light green in color. It is not tough but very tender and has a very natural tasty nutty like flavor and only takes about 20 minutes to cook. The real Indian Wild Lake Rice cannot be grown in paddies and can only be grown in the clear fresh spring fed cold water of non-polluted lakes... free of any pesticides. True Indian Rice only thrives in these cold crystal clear northern spring fed rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes region that was home to the Chippewa Indians. Real Indian ìWildî rice is sensitive and will not grow in stagnant waters.
True Indian Wild Rice Can Only Be Harvested By Hand
Harvesting Indian Wild Rice is not easy as you cannot commercially harvest Indian rice using equipment the same way that commercially grown paddy wild rice is harvested. Harvesting real Indian Wild Rice can only be done by hand the same traditional way it has always been done ever since the Great Spirit gave the Chippewa Indians this gift.
Our Family Still Harvests Real Lake Grown Indian Wild Rice The Traditional Way Our family was and is still very active in the traditional way of harvesting wild rice from lakes around our reservation in northern Wisconsin. The Chippewa were somewhat nomadic and our families would travel to where the lakes were more abundant with rice including even migrating over to the 10,000 clear lakes in Minnesota where we had relatives living with The Lake Superior Band of Mille Lacs Lake Chippewa and the St. Croix Chippewa tribes.
During the high summertime of late August or early September, the rice would be ready for harvest. I can remember helping my aunt "Annie Girl" and her husband "George" who was from the St. Croix band of Chippewa Indians. We harvested rice along the many lakes found near the borders of Minnesota and Wisconsin divided by the St. Croix River. This was hard work as the temperatures were always hot and the high humidity was almost unbearable on the water!
The reason why my family had to travel from our reservation the Lac Courte Oreilles tribe... was that many of our historical natural lake rice beds were destroyed in the 1920ís when Northern States Power flooded our traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds. The Chippewa Flowage that was created to build a hydro electrical dam, which destroyed many of the natural wild rice lake beds of our people. But today, our tribe is very active in continuing to promote the planting of new wild rice beds and the protection of our pristine clean waters, which is necessary for good rice.
Our Wild Rice Is Special and A Way of LIfe If we could get $100 a pound for wild rice it would be worth it for all the hard work and time it takes to harvest and process the rice! But we enjoy ricing because it reminds of the old days and it is good to be out with our friends who rice. The fun and laughter on the landings where we pull up our canoes is always a good time and chance to catch up with old friends. We donít rice for the money... but sometimes it helps pay the bills generally, we rice to share with others. You always want to give wild rice to friends for special celebrations or for funerals. When you give rice... it really means something because folks know how hard it was to harvest and process the rice in the true authentic way.
The rice beds were sacred to our people. There would be special prayers and ceremonies to bless the success of the upcoming harvest. No one from the tribe was allowed to harvest any rice until an elder or Chief declared that the rice was ready for harvesting. About two weeks before the rice was ready for harvesting, I can remember some of the women from the tribe would go out on certain lakes and tie big bunches of the rice together. This kept the ripening rice from falling into the lake before harvest. This no longer happens and itís been a long time since I've seen this done... but closer to harvesting... no one was allowed on the lakes. This was very important because if someone who didn't know what they were doing got out into the rice before it was ready... they could ruin the harvest for everyone. You can always tell when the rice is ready. The top of the reed where the grains are will get heavy and cause the whole top of the reed to bend over. The reeds of wild rice can grow 6 to 8 feet tall. You can tell a good harvest when the whole rice bed is full of reeds that are top heavy and bent over like they are all praying to the creator!
We Give Thanks To Our Creator For A Good Rice Harvest The night before I always remembered my grandmother would put out some tobacco on a stump and my aunt would throw some tobacco out into the lake where we were going to harvest so that the weather would be nice the next day and that it wouldnít be too windy. This offering of tobacco or "migwitch Manitou" means giving thanks to the Great Spirit and "migwitch Mahnomenî"or giving thanks for the wild rice. Giving thanks was important because you did not want storms to blow up and knock off the rice.
Harvesting Wild Rice "The Old Way" Takes Long Hard Work But Soul Satisfying! The work is hard. It takes two people in a canoe... we could always tell when "white people" were harvesting wild rice because they used flat bottom boats because it was easier... we didnít like to see this because the flat bottom boats would squash the rice rather than glide through the rice like a canoe. One person stands in back with a long stout pole about 16 foot long with a "Y" on one end and this person would push and navigate the canoe in the tall grasses where the rice was found. I can remember going through the rez (Indian slang for reservation) and knowing which family were ricers because you would always see these long poles stood up next to the house or they were kept hanging long side of the house on hooks. And you always would see big black kettles that were lying upside down and tilted against a tree. These big black kettles were used for our Sugar Bush maple syrup camps in the spring and then for parching rice in the late summer.
With the pole you would push against the roots of the grasses in the lake and by twisting the pole... you were able to steer the canoe. You always wanted to get with the same people because working the canoe in the water is like teamwork and the better a team could work together the more rice you could harvest. You also learned a certain cadence to the push of the canoe and the knocking of the rice. The more in rhythm you could work the more effective you were as a team.
Don't Rock The Boat! In addition to being really good at navigating the canoe it was important that the pusher was somewhat athletic and had good balance... you did not want to fall out! If you fell overboard... you almost certainly would tip over the canoe with all the rice you worked so hard to harvest which would quickly spill out of the canoe and float away. If you were the one to fall overboard you didnít want your partner to be mad at you for tipping everyone over... however, they would get mad only briefly because you both quickly realized that it was "meant to be" as the Creator caused this to happen... so you could spread the seeds and just plant more rice for the next year! But tipping over in high lake grass that are almost like tall weeds is not a pleasant experience!
You also have to be good at pushing your canoe through the tall lake grass because you are somewhat competing with other Indian harvesters who quickly navigate their canoes to where "the best pickin's are"... if you are slow... you will only get the areas where you have to work longer and harder to fill up the bottom of your boat. You could always tell who the novices were because when everyone pulled up at the landing... they always had the least amount of rice.
To collect the rice, you also need two knockers made out of cedar about three foot long. The reason why you wanted to make your knockers out of cedar is that it is a light wood but strong. You don't want a wood that is heavier as it makes your day a long day with sore arms. Birch is light but cannot stand the force of knocking the rice grains.
One person would sit in the middle of the canoe and would take one knocker and reach out and sweep as many long reeds of rice over the canoe and then with the other knocker and quickly knock the rice into the bottom of the boat. The knocking was an art because the better the ricer you were depended on your ability to almost "knock and scrape" as much of the rice as possible off of the tops of the reeds without damaging the reeds to let the rest of the rice ripen. Once the rice fell into the canoe the reeds would spring back up. To this day, I can still remember the first day of ricing and the first rice that fell into the bottom of the canoe... it almost sounded like heavy rain drops hitting the bottom of the aluminum canoe!
Depending on how the rice grew that year determined how hard you were going to work harvesting the rice. Some years you could fill up your canoe very quickly and other years it took all day. In a good year, the rice just seemed to jump off the reeds into your boat!
BUGS, CREEPY SCARY BUGS... LOTS OF BUGS!!!! I think one of the scariest things to the beginner ricer is the fact there are a lot of bugs involved in ricing! I can remember the first time I was physically old enough to go ricing so that I was not a hindranceÖ I was shocked to see the bottom of the canoe that was filled with rice... and the rice laying there seemed to be alive and moving! There must have been a billion bugs... all kinds of spiders, grasshoppers, dragonflies, caterpillars, lighting bugs, bees, mosquitoes, flies... you name it... it was moving and crawling around on the bottom of the boat on top of the rice!
My aunt joked and said the bugs were a good source of protein and made the rice taste good! I also learned a trick about tying plastic garbage bags around your feet so that youíre the bugs wouldnít crawl up your pants or nibble on you! I found out later that in the drying process... the bugs pretty much dried up and disappeared.
Drying The Freshly Harvested Wild Rice Once we got the rice home, we spread the rice out on big canvas tarps and put these in the hot sun. As you gently spread out the rice you would also be cleaning the rice of any reeds, twigs, big bugs, or other lake grasses. It was important to make sure the rice dried thoroughly and that you did leave out for too long otherwise the rice might start to ferment or turn on you. When the rice dried out it was then ready for ìparching.î One of the most prized possession of any Indian family was a huge black kettle and these kettles were often passed down from one generation to another. The kettle would be placed on an angle next to a fire and several pounds of grains would be ìparchedî in the hot kettle. Usually a small canoe paddle or a paddle made out of birch was used to quickly move the rice around in the kettle so it wouldnít burn. You only wanted to cure the rice and loosen the husk that protected the inner grain. This parching process helps add that natural nutty flavor to the rice.
Moccasin Dancing On The Rice! To loosen the husks the rice would be placed in tubs or barrels and a heavy pole would be dropped almost like pounding the rice but it was done in such a way that all it did was to break the point of the chaff that held it to the rice. Next, a shallow hole had been dug in the ground and this hole was covered with deer skins and the parched grains were placed in the hole. One of the reasons why Chippewa moccasins had ìcuffsî was that during this process the cuffs would be folded up around the ankles and tied so that rice would not fall into the moccasins. You then lightly danced kind of a jig with a slight twist of the moccasined foot on the rice while leaning on posts or rails that were usually fastened to a tree. The rails to lean on was important because you did not want to put your full weight on the rice and you had to quickly lightly touch the rice that is why it was like dancing or jigging.
Winnowing The Wild Rice You tried to do this final winnowing process on windy days because once the husks were really loose you placed these grains into a big shallow birch bark basket that had slightly curved sides so that you could toss and turn the rice while tossing it up into the air. The wind would blow the chaff away as you tossed the rice and you only had the clean rice left in the basket. Traditionally the man would do the dancing on the rice and the women did the winnowing of the rice. The winnowing took practice and very gentle hands motion when tossing so that you did not toss the rice on the ground. It was almost like a quick flip of the basket and a toss to get the rice to go straight up in the air and not all over!
Then the rice that was in the bottom of the winnowing basket was cleaned once more by hand to pick out some the grains that did not lose their hulls. Once this rice was cleaned it was ready for storing. This cleaned rice could be kept for many years it was very stable but usually it never lasted from one year to the next. Our people depended on this rice during long winters when it was hard to hunt.
So Little Rice... For All That Work! Throughout the entire process of harvesting from the collection, to the drying, parching, gently dancing on the rice, to the winnowing... you were careful not to break or shatter the delicate rice. Out of one hundred pounds of green rice just taken off the lakesÖ you could expect to end up with about 40 lbs of clean rice. This rice was like gold to us! It represented a lot of hard work but it was fun and soul satisfying to know that we are continuing our native traditions of gathering.
Giving Thanks And Sharing Our Rice The first rice was always cooked up and shared. There is something very good about giving thanks and sharing the first rice. Our people would always have a feast and it was a time when families would get together and celebrate. There would be dancing, good food, and it was a time of gratefulness to the Great Spirit for a good harvest of our Indian Wild Rice! |
